Cybersecurity Research Assistant

About this role

(ID: 2026-1702)

Axle is a bioscience and information technology company that offers advancements in translational research, biomedical informatics, and data science applications to research centers and healthcare organizations nationally and abroad. With experts in biomedical science, software engineering, and program management, we focus on developing and applying research tools and techniques to empower decision-making and accelerate research discoveries. We work with some of the top research organizations and facilities in the country including multiple institutes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Benefits We Offer:

• 100% Medical, Dental & Vision Coverage for Employees

• Paid Time Off and Paid Holidays

• 401K match up to 5%

• Educational Benefits for Career Growth

• Employee Referral Bonus

• Flexible Spending Accounts:

• Healthcare (FSA)

• Parking Reimbursement Account (PRK)

• Dependent Care Assistant Program (DCAP)

• Transportation Reimbursement Account (TRN)

Axle is seeking a Cybersecurity Research Assistant to join our vibrant team supporting rare disease research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This is a Remote position within the United States.

Overview

Axle supports AI research systems that run on on-premises Kubernetes clusters and shared high-performance computing infrastructure. This role implements and monitors defined security controls across that environment, and helps develop AI tooling that assists with developing and maintaining cybersecurity controls.

This is a hands-on early-career role for someone with a systems or IT background who wants to move into security engineering. You would be jointly supervised by our AI technical lead and by a lead systems administrator, giving you a direct line into both the security engineering side and the day-to-day operation of the infrastructure you are securing. We are looking for a self-motivated person who wants to build a career in cybersecurity, gaining hands-on experience and earning the certifications that go with it. Axle will sponsor the right candidate for those certifications and provides working hours to study for them.

Responsibilities

• Implement assigned security controls as configuration changes across our Kubernetes, Linux, database, and model-serving environments, working from the control catalog and an assigned task list.

• Build out and operate monitoring and detection coverage, including metrics collection, dashboards, log aggregation, and alert routing.

• Run vulnerability scanning across container images, hosts, and application dependencies on a set schedule, track findings to closure, and keep the plan of action and milestones current.

• Write and maintain the automation that applies hardening baselines and checks them for drift, using Ansible and Python.

• Contribute to secrets management, network policy, and role-based access control work across the cluster environments.

• Build the deterministic collectors that gather control evidence, including cluster API queries, policy engine reports, scan output, access control dumps, and database configuration exports, normalized into a common format and stored with timestamps.

• Help build the internal AI tooling that assists with this work, including retrieval over the control catalog and system documentation, drafting from collected evidence, and triaging scanner output into ranked findings for human review.

• Keep security documentation in agreement with the deployed configuration, and raise discrepancies promptly through your supervisors.

• Test what you build. Restore a backup and confirm it works, break a policy on purpose and confirm the alert fires, and verify that a control you implemented does what the catalog says it does.

• Document what you did in enough detail that an assessor can follow it a year from now.

• Prepare material for security reviews and continuous monitoring reports, working with your supervisors on anything that goes to an assessor or an authorizing official.

Must Have

• One to three years of professional experience in IT, systems administration, help desk, network operations, or a comparable hands-on technical role.

• Comfort on the Linux command line. You can read a log, trace a permissions problem, and work out what a service is doing.

• Scripting ability in Bash and Python. You do not need to be a software engineer, but you should have automated something real and be able to walk us through it.

• Demonstrated interest in security. Coursework, a home lab, capture the flag competitions, a Security+ in progress, a personal project, or security work inside a broader IT role all count.

• Careful, methodical work habits. Much of this job is doing a procedure correctly, recording what happened, and noticing when the result does not match what was expected.

• Willingness to ask questions early and to say plainly when you do not know something.

• Ability to work independently on assigned tasks and to give regular updates on what is planned, in progress, and finished.

• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust Security clearance.

Requirements

• Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or a related field. We will consider equivalent professional experience or a completed technical certification program in place of a degree.

• Working knowledge of Linux system administration, ideally on RHEL based systems such as Rocky Linux, and on Ubuntu.

• Basic understanding of networking, including TCP/IP, DNS, TLS, firewalls, and how a request travels from a browser to a service.

• Basic familiarity with containers, and real interest in learning Kubernetes. We will teach it. You should want to learn it.

• Familiarity with version control and comfort working in a shared Git repository.

• Ability to follow a written procedure precisely, and to notice when the procedure itself is wrong.

• Clear written communication.

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